To promote campus unity, Student Senate is sponsoring the addition of two student made art pieces being put up in the University Center stairwells this year.
Student Senate hopes to continue making the University Center a place where students, who come from a variety of different backgrounds and who have a number of different interests, can come together in a peaceful and safe area and be one together in a communal Pacific family.
“We want the University Center to be a place for the students,” said sophomore and Undergraduate Student Senate President Elona Wilson. “We want the art pieces to be something all students can connect with.”
The UC Art Project started last year after Student Senate reached out to students who would be interested in making art that would represent Pacific’s mission statement.
After listening to a number of different proposals from students, Student Senate decided to commission junior Kaleb Bass and senior Bronson Barretto for the project.
“We gave the artists Pacific’s mission statement and they took words from there and turned it into art,” said Wilson.
Barretto, a philosophy major and art and political science minor, explained how he had been working on his art piece on and off for about a year with some help from his friend, senior Warner Shaw.
“It’s a nine piece panel, each of which are metallic prints, and on them are nine different Pacific students,” explained Barretto. “I did a double exposure type of product in which I combined two photos, one being the portrait of the student and the other being some type of scenery, and the point of the entire piece was to explain cultural diversity by showing people’s different backgrounds.”
Barretto hopes that all people will be able to take something away from the piece.
“I hope that people will be able to see themselves within the photos and that they will be reminded of their homes or where they’re from while also understanding the place they’re currently at, Pacific,” said Barretto.
Student Senate hopes to keep these art pieces up for years to come.
“We want students to connect to the art,” said Wilson. “We want Pacific to be an open and welcoming space. Seeing the mission statement represented visually will have a much bigger impact than just seeing it on paper.”
Leave a Reply